E-ON electric smart meter bill of £5500 for two people living in student flat . need help

Gerry1

To summarise...

• Lots more factual info required to clear up all the uncertainties, especially meter reading types and dates, and the date when you registered with E.On.

• 30,000kWh in 12 months is high but certainly not impossible.  A dumb smart meter plus a dodgy landlord / letting agent / previous tenant could well explain it, as could other factors such as an elevated location, large rooms, northerly latitude, poor insulation, top floor, frequent lengthy showers etc.

• A day rate of 21.0945p/kWh and a daily charge of 30.765p will have doubled the bill.

• You can chase up your former flatmate; they are responsible for their share.  Ask Citizens Advice how this can be done cost effectively, perhaps a formal letter from yourself followed up by a solicitor's letter if necessary.

• A faulty meter is not very likely, but admin problems such as it being a neighbour's meter are more likely, especially in a newly built block of flats.  If the new tenant is co-operative it's quite easy to test the meter yourselves, especially if you can visit to explain to help and to explain how it's done.  If simple tests suggest it may be faulty then a temporary check meter would probably be cheaper than a formal meter test.
  
• Conduct everything in writing.  Send important things by Royal Mail and get a free certificate of posting.

Don't forget to update us about the final outcome.

hatchet12345

just seen your responses i will get back to you shortly.
when i rang in jan and complained about the high bills should the have offered me a better tarrif and told me about E7 if that is what i was on

hatchet12345

pics of bill, meters and rad in this post and next

hatchet12345

next set. someone just said they are water radiators and that i must have had a electric boiler or something?
after bill in jan we only ever had the ones in the bedrooms switched on , but very rarely

hatchet12345

feel very conned by E-ON and can not understand why they are not investigating this properly and checking the meter.
something is not right and dont know what to do

Gerry1

hatchet12345 said:

when i rang in jan and complained about the high bills should the have offered me a better tarrif and told me about E7 if that is what i was on

Sorry to have to be the devil's advocate, but your bills show you the tariff you are on, and they usually have a statement that suggests thinking about switching tariff or company.

It's like choosing to fill up with MagicSuperDuperFormula 101 on the motorway at 169.9p.  They're not obliged to tell you that your car will happily run on boring old unleaded that you can buy on their main road outlet at 119.9p.

hatchet12345

have you looked at the pictures gerry

hatchet12345

there was no statement suggesting we change tarriff

Gerry1

• Check your PM.
• There's usually a bit elsewhere in the small print on the bill about changing tariffs.
• Looks like the smart meter is working (A = Actual meter reading).
• What about the earlier bills and the opening meter reading?
• Another clanger, I'm afraid.  Not only on the standard variable plan (which is the most expensive) but you missed out on the Direct Debit discount because you paid on receipt on bills.  That made the most expensive tariff even more expensive.
• Probably totally irrelevant, but your letting agent seems to have misread the meter; the decimal point is missing, so it  should have been 35128.6
• The heaters run 'on demand' so are unsuitable for E7.  Perhaps there were storage heaters at one time which were replaced with cheap panel radiators and no-one changed the meter or the tariff, and nobody spotted that the setup was unsuitable.
• The meter number matches the bill but it could still be a neighbour's if it's a block of flats.
• You could make a Subject Access Request asking for a recording or transcript of your telephone calls to see whether they ignored a request for their cheapest tariff.  If so, you could try asking to be billed at DD rates on that tariff from then onwards, and going to the Ombudsman if they refuse, but it's a bit of a long shot.
• Otherwise you'll just have to ask for a payment plan and put pressure on your flatmate to pay up.

Micron

hatchet12345 said:

we had electric heating on a timer

i am not sure what E7 heaters are

Just two points that might be relevant;

The photo of the radiator you posted looks like it has a valve on the end and it isn't a storage radiator, so I can't understand the need to use vast amounts of electricity on the E7 night tariff.

With the above in mind to me the bill just looks weird, 1075 units of useage is on the E7 night tariff, in that area that would be only for 7 hours between  00.30 - 07.30 (5 units per hour)  with 1779 units over the remaing 17 hours (3.5 units per hour) ?